Who has not been dazzled and intrigued when lifting
his gaze to the celestial vault on a clear, dark
night? The spectacle of those fleeting and distant
lights racks both our eyes and our brains. Is
this star farther away than that one, or is it
simply less luminous? Is that little blot, barely
visible over there, a nebula, a star cluster or
a galaxy?
Have you ever asked yourself where the Voyager
space probes are? What does Saturn look like in
Titan’s sky or, better yet, what does the
rise of Jupiter look like from the surface of
Europa? WinStars can help you find the answers
to these questions.
WinStars uses the latest 3D technology to show
the objects of our solar system in a realistic
manner. Thus, it is possible to move from one
planet to another, to follow a space probe on
its long voyage or to observe a celestial event
from a place to which you could never go. The
use of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s DE
404 planetary theories allows us to have a precise
representation of the events displayed.
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a database of 2,500,000 stars; |
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a catalogue of 10,000 nebulae, galaxies
and star clusters; |
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a direction of observation which is
easily controlled by a mouse and in real
time; |
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a precise representation of the observable
sky from a point on the earth’s surface
on a given date; |
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a 3D interface to give more realism to
celestial objects; |
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a calculation of notable astronomical
phenomena visible from an observation point
on the earth;
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detailed information about each object; |
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a calculation of the positions of the
principal satellites of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune, of comets and of asteroids; |
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an outline of the celestial equator,
the ecliptic, and a grid of azimuthal and
equatorial coordinates; |
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a 3D outline of the planetary orbits |
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drives a large range of telescopes |
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compatible with the seti@home BOINC version
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Internet resources are also available:
updated comets and asteroids' elements,
querying of DSS (Digitized Sky Survey) servers
to obtain a photograph of that portion of
the sky being displayed by the program,
a notice of the visibility of artificial
satellites, etc.
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automatic updates; |
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a program developed entirely in C++ |
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a 1GHz CPU |
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Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7/Linux with Wine software |
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DirectX version 9.0c |
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128 MB of RAM |
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100 MB of hard drive space |
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a 3D video card with at least 65535 colors
(16 bits) |
